The Final Frontier

In the Summer of 1989 I had the chance to deepen my interest at a week-long residential course at Sevenoaks School in Kent. It consisted of lectures and activities all to do with space exploration, science and technology. Many prominent names in British space science and industry were present, and the hundred sixth formers attending "Space School '89" were all given a tremendous boost of enthusiasm for space and its applications. Like many graduates of the Space School I joined the Space School Association, and since then have received updates on its activities and future events.

In September 1991 the Space School organised its first trip to Moscow to tour the space facilities; I was unable to apply for a place as I was working in a Summer job at the time. However this year I was able to go, and spent a very enjoyable ten days as a guest of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, where Helen Sharman (Britain's first astronaut) trained. I was one of forty young people from around the UK on the visit; the others ranged in age from about 16 to 22.

The general pattern of our stay was a series of lectures and practicals held in the morning within the training centre, followed by a coach trip into Moscow in the afternoon to see tourist attractions or space-related places. On a couple of days the coach trips lasted a whole day; the first to Zagorsk and the other to Kaluga on our penultimate day. We stayed at the Orbita Hotel in Star City, which was built for the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975 when many Americans were visiting.

The cost of the visit itself was an all-in price of £895. The breakdown was approximately as follows:-

Thursday 23rd July

A quick bit of explanation here: the Space School and its director Rodney Buckland are based at the Department of Bioengineering in Brunel University, at the head which is Heinz Wolff, former presenter of the Great Egg Race on TV. Space School courses similar to Space School '89 are held at the university at least twice a year, though it does organise other events, such as our trip to Star City.

I checked in at the Space School office and met two old friends from Space School '89, Dev Mohindra and Matthew Angling, as well as many new faces. A crowd of us then trooped off to a local pub for a bar meal. We were all conscious that this might be our last proper meal for eleven days; the people who went on the 1991 trip told horror stories of being served meatballs and mashed potato at every meal (including breakfast). Fortunately, whereas they stayed in a hostel in Moscow, we would be staying inside Star City and eating at a good restaurant.

At the pub I also met Richard Wyatt, a reporter from HTV West. He would be with us for half the visit, then fly back home and do his report. He had a camcorder with him which would enable him to capture our activities on tape at a moment's notice. Being from the Central region I didn't recognise him; had I been one of the four or five people on the trip who came from the Southwest then his face would have been instantly familiar.

As well as Rodney and Richard, a teacher from Bristol called David was also coming along to help lead our party. In all we numbered over forty. There were only two or three students older than me; most were sixth formers.

Later that evening we ambled into the Union bar; I met up with two more friends from Space School '89, Gabby and Dean. Eventually I wandered over to the accommodation block with my luggage and went to bed.

Friday 24th July

The journey to the airport took only a few minutes. Once there, we piled into Terminal 1. As I wheeled my luggage over to the check-in desks I noticed the singer Chesney Hawkes amongst the multinational throng. I deliberately wandered past without showing the slightest flicker of recognition, but then pointed him out to the others.

Everything went smoothly as we were gently but efficiently digested by the Heathrow processing system. Having made a quick phone call to my Dad's office to say everything was OK, I boarded the plane. It was a British Airways Boeing 767. In some ways it would have been nice to have had the Russian experience right from the start and flown with Aerophlot. We took off on time at 9.20am.

The flight to Moscow took about three hours. The pilot explained that since the Berlin Wall came down the route was now far more direct. We flew over Amsterdam, Berlin and Vilnius on the way. Hardly any of the other passengers on the plane were Russian; they were mostly Western businessmen and holidaymakers. As we neared Moscow, it struck me how much forest could be seen so close to the capital.

When we landed at Moscow Sheremetyevo, one of the first things I noticed was how quiet it was compared to Heathrow. There were lots of Aerophlot planes around but none of them seemed to be going anywhere. In the terminal building we soon arrived at a queue; the passport control officials were taking a couple of minutes examining each passenger's documents. Eventually everyone was admitted into the country and we assembled in the arrivals hall where we met several people from Star City who had been sent to meet us. We piled onto a waiting coach for the journey to Star City, which is about 40Km to the Northeast of Moscow.

The journey was prolonged by a huge M25-style traffic jam on the main ring road. For the most part there were no barriers between the opposing lanes, and vehicles were crossing over to create a spontaneous contraflow system. This reduced the oncoming traffic to one lane but still nothing was moving ahead; the driver eventually managed to double back to a junction.

This unexpected detour allowed us to see more of Moscow; we entered the suburbs and saw endless grey apartment blocks set back from the road in groups. I had seen them from the air, but they looked even less attractive from the ground. There was more traffic than I thought there'd be, given the supposed shortage of fuel; many main roads also had tramways running along them. There were shops on the ground floor of some of the blocks, though it was difficult to tell, because instead of colourful window displays, all one could see apart from the name of the shop was just a crude picture of what the shop was selling, and behind it net curtains shielding everything inside from view. However on street corners fruit and veg was very obviously for sale; these private stalls were attracting plenty of custom.

On reaching the outskirts of Moscow the apartment blocks gave way to small two-storey wooden houses, each having its own garden with fruit trees and a vegetable patch. Many of the occupants of these houses were selling home produce from tables at the roadside: flowers, preserved fruit, water melons and bottles of soft drinks.

After another half an hour or so we reached the gates of Star City.

Time for another quick bit of explanation: Star City (founded in 1960) is in two parts, one inside the other. Behind the main gate is the residential area, containing blocks of flats for the cosmonauts, technicians and administrators and their families. Altogether Star City has about 3500 inhabitants. There are also garages, a school, some shops, a restaurant, a museum and a hotel. Beyond another security gate is the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, which (was) is the hub of the (Soviet) CIS manned space programme. However, rockets are most definitely not launched from there- that would be far too dangerous. Mission control and the space hardware assembly lines are also elsewhere.

We arrived at the Orbita Hotel with great relief after the long journey. The ten-floor hotel was built, evidently in a hurry, for the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975 when lots of Americans were visiting. By the time we were there, though, it had begun to show its age and was getting rather crumbly at the edges. I shared a room with Matthew Angling on the second floor. The standard of accommodation would, I think, get at the most only two stars from the AA. The beds were, however, comfortable and there was an ensuite bathroom and toilet which was really all we needed. We found the odd cockroach during our stay but that didn't seem to matter
too much.

Our evening meal was at the local restaurant. We had tomatoes and cheese, then a sort of sausage meat or chicken thing with peas and potatoes, followed by cream cakes and coffee. The portions were small but the food tasted OK.

One of the Russians accompanying us was Katia, the 15 year-old daughter of a software engineer at Star City. After the meal we asked her where the pub was; she didn't think there was one. So four of us decided to go for a walk instead; if we didn't find the pub then at least we could explore. Star City is surrounded by forest, so once we had passed some garages and a building site, the track ended up in the woods; there were also a couple of small lakes.

It is interesting to note that we were able to wander completely freely within the residential part of Star City. I expect that only a few years ago we would have been arrested and interrogated had they found us strolling around like that.

On returning to my room I had a soothing shower, went to bed and wrote my diary.

Saturday 25th July

We then left for the Star City museum. This was largely dedicated to Yuri Gagarin, who died in 1968 in a plane crash seven years after becoming the first person in space. The rest of the museum was dedicated to the rest of the history of Soviet manned spaceflight. First we were shown a black and white film from 1970 about Gagarin. Cosmonauts were about the closest things to gods under the old system, and the film was certainly very reverent towards him. The background music was of course the stereotypical workers' anthem. Afterwards I asked about his family; the guide said that his wife is still living in Star City.

As well as all the space memorabilia there was a replica of Gagarin's office as he had left it when he died. Every cosmonaut since has come to this office just before launch to sign a "visitors' book" and write down his or her thoughts. One of the three women to have signed it was, of course, Helen Sharman.

In one of the main rooms of the museum was a used descent module from a space mission. Descent modules are the capsules used to bring the crew back to Earth safely without burning up. By the end of our stay we must have seen at least a dozen of these brown, charred pods in a variety of places.

I bought a couple of posters at the hastily set-up souvenir stall and then went to lunch in the museum restaurant. We found that the only drink available cheaply and plentifully was bottled Fanta; after this we regularly consumed large quantities of the stuff at mealtimes. For some reason Milky Way chocolate coins were also available!

In the afternoon we took the coach into Moscow. At the very centre of the city the ugly concrete apartment blocks gave way to an older, more familiar architectural style. Many of the buildings, although drab and poorly maintained, would not have been out of place in any large European city. Occasionally I spotted buildings enclosed by scaffolding; they were being restored by Western European builders. It is of course important for future tourism that as much as possible of the original splendour of the city be saved. Not all the Soviet architecture was boring, though. Some of the pre-war buildings were quite ornate, such as the railway
stations.

On our way through the city we went through a square containing the former KGB headquarters, the Lubyanka jail. In front was a pedestal which until August 1991 had supported a statue of the KGB's founder, Felix Dzerzhinsky. Its unceremonious removal by a crane was watched by a large crowd and the world's television, shattering the LeCarré atmosphere of "Moscow Centre."

The coach dropped us off at Red Square. As soon as we disembarked we were surrounded by young Russians trying to sell us souvenirs, such as Russian dolls, military hats, watches, postcards and badges. They were willing to accept dollars, pounds or deutschmarks, though they would also accept the equivalent price in roubles. Capitalism, for them at least, was here to stay.

Red Square itself was rather smaller than I had previously imagined, probably as a result of watching too much official TV coverage of May Day parades. For the same reason Lenin's Mausoleum was unexpectedly small, perhaps the size of a bungalow. The balcony on which political leaders used to stand was always filmed from a low camera angle. In fact it was only about four or five metres above the ground.

Behind Lenin's box (which was closed when we were there) is part of the Kremlin wall, standing on foundations made of decomposing politicians and other heros of the Soviet Union. In fact four cosmonauts are also buried there, including Gagarin. In addition there is the grave of Sergei Korolev, technical wizard of early Soviet spaceflight, without whom Sputnik and Gagarin's flight may not have happened. Both he and Gagarin have many statues and murals dedicated to them.

The most impressive sight in the square was St. Basil's Cathedral, with its warm red brick and colourful domes. It was built about 400 years ago but isn't in use at the moment, the museum it did contain having closed.

From the top of one of the Kremlin buildings the Russian tricolore had already been flying for nearly a year. However around the walls were several towers, each with a large red star (weighing several tonnes) at the top which is supposed to turn with the wind. These hadn't yet been replaced.

The next stop on our coach tour was a hard currency souvenir shop, which wasn't very interesting except for the fact that they sold cans of Sprite. On the way we caught a brief glimpse of both McDonald's and Pizza Hut. We then went to a hotel where we could change some of our money into roubles. The exchange rate was quite a good one, at 250 roubles to the pound or 150 to the dollar. To spread the commission we clubbed together to change our money all at once. Altogether there was $150 to give to the lady at the counter. In return we received a stack of banknotes at least six inches thick: we sat on the floor and counted them out like monopoly money. Katia stared with amazement and sadness at our apparent wealth.

From there we went back to Star City again. Evening meal was in the museum restaurant and consisted of steak, boiled potatoes, cucumber and coleslaw followed by an ice cream dessert. Many bottles of Fanta were once again bought and consumed. Though our meals during the week sometimes seemed strange (for example chicken and rice for breakfast), I think we ate quite well overall. The restaurant even managed to cater for the vegetarians in our party. Eating in restaurants all the time didn't, of course, allow us to see what the average Muscovite was eating during the food shortages.

After socialising for the rest of the evening in and around the hotel I had a shower, finally getting to bed at 2am.

Sunday 26th July

In the monastery car park there were at least a hundred souvenir stalls, each one manned by a Russian (speaking passable English), eager to show off his wares and haggle over the price. Russian dolls, badges and military gear made up most of what was for sale. There were various different designs of doll, nearly all of them either religious, traditional, political or The Beatles! I bought a political one, progressing from Boris Yeltsin on the outside down to a tiny Lenin at the centre. I also bought a watercolour painting of the monastery; it cost me four times as much to have it framed back home than it did to buy it. Unlike many others in our party, I didn't buy any army uniforms.

Inside the monastery Svetlana showed us round, telling us its history. As well as being a translator she also used to be a guide. I wasn't allowed into one of the chapels because I was wearing shorts. Inside another church I was immediately impressed by the glittering decor and icons. In the corner was a crowd of Russian women singing in typical Orthodox style. Around the monastery we saw the occasional beggar, taking advantage of the shelter and protection it provides. Members of our party who had bought army uniforms met up with some real Russian soldiers and stood shoulder to shoulder with them posing for photographs.

We took the coach to a nearby restaurant for lunch. The portions were larger than in Star City, and I had my first taste of borscht; it was quite pleasant. Next door to the restaurant was a toy museum. We only spent half an hour there, which was just as well as it didn't really grab our interest much. The guidebooks cost 5 roubles each- 2p!

After returning to Star City we had a couple of hours of free time before the evening meal. At this time of day throughout our stay, some army conscripts of a similar age to us would often come and sit outside the hotel to smoke and talk. They enjoyed meeting people from our group, who would offer them cigarettes and chewing gum. Later in the evening while we were socialising, some local Russians joined us; word was spreading that we were staying in the hotel, and by the end of the week quite a rapport had been established. They managed to find some space-related souvenirs which some of our party bought or swapped things for.

Monday 27th July

Time for some necessary explanation. The Russians have a space station in low Earth orbit called Mir. It was launched in 1986, since when three extra modules have been added. It has been manned almost continuously since then, with two-man crews staying up there for at least four months at a time. When a new crew is launched, a foreign guest cosmonaut often goes up as well for a short period while the long-term crews change over. They are launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, several thousand kilometres from Moscow. The cosmonauts sit in a Soyuz capsule, a well-tested basic design first used in 1967. For the return to Earth the Soyuz craft undocks from Mir and breaks into three pieces, two of which burn up in the atmosphere, the other being the shielded descent module in which the cosmonauts sit. Having re-entered it parachutes down to the ground.

The particular mission we were watching was called Soyuz TM-15, the crew comprising two Russians and a Frenchman. We were sitting in a control room which although not active at the time was still showing TV pictures of the launch, with various items of data appearing on other screens. The rocket rose gently off the launch pad bang on time. Once it had disappeared from the camera's view we saw pictures from inside the capsule. The crew looked fairly relaxed; they didn't have much to do, with most systems being automatic. One of them seemed to be reading the instruction manual! A TV crew and a press photographer were much in evidence as we watched the launch, mingling with us and asking for our reactions.

Afterwards we had interesting lectures on orbital geometry and the Soyuz-Mir system. At the end of the second one I enjoyed probing the lecturer on their future plans.

After lunch we took the coach to Kaliningrad in the Moscow suburbs to visit mission control. After a talk we were shown the main control room. Although there had been a launch just a few hours earlier it was virtually empty, with only a couple of people at a computer screen playing a video game! The guide explained that the Soyuz capsule was at that time out of communication range. Both it and Mir were displayed as dots on the main screen.

Next we saw another control room used for the Russian space shuttle (called Buran), which had only been launched once (unmanned) in 1988. The programme had been mothballed until sufficient funding becomes available for it to continue.

There was also a dormant control room used for unmanned interplanetary probes, such as missions to Mars and Venus.

After another talk and a couple of videos we had a brief look at the souvenir stall before returning to Star City.

Dinner was quite nice- steak! For once I was in bed before midnight.

Tuesday 28th July

The morning session at the training centre consisted of four lectures. The first was on survival after touchdown should the capsule land somewhere inhospitable and the crew have to wait a while for the arrival of the recovery team. The survival kit carried in the descent module contains all sorts of items for use in such places as deserts, mountains, forests and the sea.

We then went to a room containing a PC set up to simulate the manual docking of a Soyuz capsule with Mir. Two joysticks could be adjusted to guide the craft into the docking port on the screen at just the right angle and speed. Several people from my group had a go, none of them making a successful docking. The system was an interesting example of the Russians adapting advanced Western computing power to their own needs.

Next came a visit to the planetarium. The trainees sit in a cabin at the centre of the room and practice their astronavigation by looking out through the windows at the stars projected on the dome. Inside the cabin were different types of control panels and windows to enable simulation of different spacecraft designs.

We then had a lecture on the psychological tests given to cosmonauts. They have to withstand the pressures of isolation, claustrophobia, an intensive work schedule and having severely limited human company for months on end. The lecture gave us a couple of quick but supposedly revealing tests, the first involving coloured cards and the second requiring mental agility and precision.

Accompanying us round the training centre from that morning onwards was the young son of a cosmonaut, whose father had only recently (in March) returned to Earth after several months aboard Mir.

After lunch we went into Moscow to visit the Kremlin. Many people think of it as just one building, but in fact it's a walled city, containing a surprising number of churches and other buildings as well as governmental offices. We passed the empty Soviet parliament building, and saw a row of official black cars. Anyone straying from the pavement was instantly reprimanded by a policeman with a whistle. We saw a large statue of Lenin next to a garden area in which he liked to relax. I imagined him walking his dog amongst the trees.

It was just a short coach ride to the next place on our itinerary: the Russian Parliament building, nicknamed the "White House." Nearly a year prior to our visit it had been surrounded by barricades during the coup. Boris Yeltsin had climbed onto a tank to rally his supporters at the very spot where we were standing. Now there was no sign of the turmoil at all. One puzzling thing was the continuing presence of the hammer and sickle above the main entrance.

After dinner back in Star City several people went for a swim in one of the lakes. I went to a room in the hotel where a computer console had been set up by an employee of the training centre. It was a flight simulator based on either a Mig fighter or the Russian space shuttle Buran. There was also another PC demonstrating software for aerodynamic modelling of various aircraft and wing shapes.

Bed at 1am.

Wednesday 29th July

Once inside the training centre, my group was taken to a room containing two spacesuits. They were suits designed for spacewalks from Mir, and because they never had to function under gravity they were so heavy that they had to be suspended from the ceiling for Earth-bound training. After a brief talk everyone's hands went up to volunteer to have a go inside one.

The first pair was a girl called Clare (from Crewe) and myself. Having emptied our pockets and removed our shoes we had to put on linen undergarments. On top came a suit threaded with plastic tubes which under real conditions would carry coolant water around the body to maintain a comfortable temperature. Then we were handed headsets (for communications) and linen gloves. The spacesuits themselves were all in one piece, the entrance being a door in the back (this was different to the American ones which come in two sections: a top and a pair of trousers). To get into the spacesuit itself I had to stand on a chair, hold on to the top of the doorway and lower my legs in. I then had to get my arms in, first one then the other. This was quite hard to do as I was still leaning back. Once this was done I ducked my head under into the helmet. The technician closed the door - which is actually the backpack containing all the life support systems - and started to circulate the air and inflate the suit. All I could hear was the ventilation and the conversation over the headset; my ears started to pop.

The suit became more comfortable when inflated, as it would be in space. On the chest were various buttons and dials used by the cosmonaut to control his environment; to see them, mirrors mounted on the wrists could be used. I could feel quite a lot through the gloves' fingers; the ends were made out of rubber instead of the usual tough multi-layered material. On either side of the helmet were lights which I could switch on and off. I could also pull a gold-coated visor down over the window; this is used if the cosmonaut is working in bright sunlight.

Once Clare had been sealed into the other suit we were paid a visit by Alexander Serebrov. He had used such suits several times during spacewalks and it was thrilling to shake his hand from inside one of them. All the time our activities were being watched by the TV cameras and a press photographer.

All too soon the experience was over and it was time for the next pair to have a go. Not everyone was able to take up the opportunity; although the suits could cope with a range of sizes some people were too short or too tall.

My group's next activity was to see the spacesuits worn during launch and landing. Because they are for use inside cramped spacecraft and have to be comfortable on Earth, they are much lighter than the EVA suits we had just seen. The two girls in our group tried them on. They looked much easier to put on and move around in than the EVA suits. Once wearing them they got into a launch couch. For real cosmonauts this is individually moulded to his or her body measurements, to support them as comfortably as possible during the accelerations of launch and landing. As with the EVA suits they circulated the air and inflated them, making them quite rigid.

All the groups were then reunited in the control room where two days earlier we had watched the launch of Soyuz TM-15. By now the capsule had rendez-voused with Mir and was about to dock. We sat and watched TV pictures from the Soyuz capsule as it inched towards one of the space station's axial docking ports, far more accurately than our attempts on the manual docking simulator. It was interesting to see live pictures of Mir in situ. Eventually the view disappeared, indicating a successful docking.

In the afternoon we visited a small cosmonautics museum in Moscow, which contained a mixture of unmanned probes, spacesuits, a couple of used descent modules and other memorabilia. One item was a duplicate of the inflatable airlock used in the first spacewalk by Alexei Leonov in 1965. Leonov still lives in Star City but had retired as its director a year or two prior to our visit.

On the way back to Star City we stopped off at the top of Lenin's Hill to get a view over the whole city. Once again we encountered scores of private souvenir stalls selling the usual selection of dolls, badges and military apparel.

After the meal I played whist for a while in the hotel.

Best day so far.

Thursday 30th July

One of the interesting things about waiting at the security gate was trying to spot cosmonauts arriving in their cars. As usual Alexander Volkov, veteran of three missions from 1985-92, dropped his son off to join us. One member of our group could spot cosmonauts a mile off; he had a book containing photos and biographies of most of them, and informed us that their cars could be identified from the number plates. By the end of the week he had spotted at least eight and obtained autographs from some of them. This morning he spotted one who had only been on one mission in the 1970s. Clearly they often continued in important jobs in the space programme even after their final mission.

Our first appointment was with the pressure chamber. This was a large four-seater tank able to produce low atmospheric pressures such as those used in spacecraft. We sat inside and put on communication headsets as the technician closed the door. The pressure was reduced to that at 4000 metres above sea level, at a rate equivalent to 15 metres per second. Trainee cosmonauts have to be able to cope with more extreme conditions yet still perform tasks efficiently.

Next we went to a room containing an "orthotable." This was a bed pivoted at the centre enabling the strapped-in subject to lie back at 45 degrees with their head a metre or more below their feet. This bizarre exercise simulates the movement of fluid from the legs to the upper half of the body experienced by cosmonauts during their first few hours in space.

We then met up with the BBC camera crew in a room containing a rotating chair. They recorded us as we took turns in the chair, which was designed to train the vestibular system, ie our sense of balance. As the chair rotated we had to close our eyes and lean our head to alternate sides in time with a regular beeping sound. When I had a go I felt disoriented but not overwhelmingly queezy. Someone had a go in a chair inside a rotating drum where you had to keep your eyes open and look at the stripes. Next door was a machine almost entirely like a simple swing, though I think when used in earnest the subject is rotated about a vertical axis at the same time. All three machines were featured in a report on the Six o'Clock News the following Monday.

The highlight of the morning was being shown the Soyuz TM capsule simulator. It stood vertically, as if for launch, in a large hall. After a brief introduction we saw the external consoles used to control the simulations. They looked quite advanced but at the same time rather bulky and low-tech. Cosmonaut Viktor Afanasyev (who had spent 25 weeks on Mir from 1990-91) was at hand to show us the capsule itself, while he wasn't being interviewed by the BBC. The Soyuz craft is designed to carry three people, so I was surprised when eight of us managed to cram into the orbital module, which is on top of the descent module and the part which
can plug into Mir. We saw all the storage compartments, ventilation systems, food and water dispensers and the toilet- a tiny funnel right in the corner!

Eventually I went "downstairs" and sat in the descent module in the commander's moulded launch couch. At an angle in front of me was a complex array of controls and display screens, while vertically above was the hatch leading into the orbital module. There were two joysticks either side of my knees similar to the ones on the docking simulator we had already seen. There was also a larger central joystick (which all three seats had) whose only obvious function at the time was to make an indicator light up on the control panel.

On our way out of the building we saw a uniformed man standing talking to a colleague. One of the translators introduced him as Piotr Klimuk, director of Star City- Mr. Big, in fact. He had spent more than eleven weeks in space on three missions between 1973 and 1978. Several of us shook his hand and he revealed that he had only just returned from Baikonur having watched the launch of Soyuz TM-15.

In the afternoon we took a short coach ride to the Russian Air Force Museum. Since it was inside a military base we weren't allowed to take any photographs, which was a pity given the amount there was to see. We were shown round by an eccentric guide who made our Russian friends laugh a lot. He had obviously been a good communist and took great relish in describing to us the glorious history of the Soviet Air Force and the achievements of the various aircraft on display. We spent quite a long time in the interior part of the exhibition before going outside, however for some reason he failed to draw our attention to the chunk of American U2 spyplane wreckage on view!

Once outside we were greeted by an amazing sight: scores of aircraft of all types stretching off into the distance. They were just parked there on the grass, some with flat tyres and peeling paint. The guide took us round, delivering an increasingly animated commentary and unwilling to let us wander round on our own. Many planes were of highly unusual designs, often test aircraft of which only a few were built; for example there was one with a drooped nose which came up and covered the windows during flight. The crew would then have to fly by their instruments alone! We saw the Soviet version of Concorde, no doubt designed by taking a look at the original Anglo-French model. There were also dozens of fighter aircraft and bombers. There was even a massive helicopter with two huge rotors either side of an aeroplane fuselage.

In the evening we had a slightly more formal meal at the restaurant, with everyone looking rather smarter than usual.

Friday 31st July

My group was shown into a long hall containing the Mir training simulator, which consisted of the core module and the three others which have been added since its launch in 1986. After a talk by one of the staff we clambered around inside.

The core module contains the main control panels, sleeping quarters, air filters, storage cupboards, a dining area, a treadmill and a loo. The smallest of the three additional modules, called Kvant, contains various instruments for making astronomical observations. The other two, Kvant 2 and Kristall, are longer and of the same basic design but are mainly for Earth observation and materials science respectively. Kristall also has a shower, and an airlock for use during spacewalks or docking with a space shuttle.

In all the modules there was an incredible amount crammed efficiently into every possible space. They have been building space stations since 1971, so what we saw was the product of twenty years of continually evolving design. What has made Mir so successful compared to the earlier Salyut stations is the increased number of docking ports, allowing either extra modules, Soyuz craft or unmanned resupply vessels to plug in at various points around the station. At one end there is an axial port, and at the other there is a "multiple docking adapter" with five ports, one axial and four radial.

It is maybe worth noting here that in Mir there is definitely an "up" and a "down;" the crew find it too confusing if there isn't.

At the end of our session on Mir each of us was given some genuine "space food." It was all vacuum packed in plastic. I had a packet of peanuts, another one of biscuits, a dried fruit & nut bar and a dehydrated fruit drink.

It would have taken weeks to see everything in and around the Mir simulator, but we had to move on all too briefly to our lectures. The first was on the astrophysical experiments carried out on Mir, for example using the telescopes mounted on the Kvant module. The second was about the materials science done in Kristall, which has several furnaces for growing very pure crystals. Eventually they hope to go into commercial manufacture of semiconductors.

In the afternoon we returned to the Kremlin once again to visit the armoury museum. This is one of the top museums in Moscow, and contains religious icons & regalia, silverware, military gear, ambassadorial gifts, Fabergé eggs, horse-drawn coaches and ladies dresses. Some of the exhibits were over 800 years old; I don't think I saw anything from the twentieth century. We were getting a little tired of guided tours by this stage, so we opted to walk round by ourselves. Most of the exhibits had English translations so we could find out about them if we were interested.

Later on outside the Kremlin we found an ice cream kiosk, which was just what we needed on a warm day. It was a bit lumpy but tasted alright.

We arrived back at the restaurant slightly late, but the wait was worth it because we were given fried egg and steak! There were no leftovers. After dinner five of us went on a walk round Star City. Apparently no-one in the West has ever published a plan of the site, so we spent an hour or two wandering through the streets assembling a crude map. We noted down plenty of tower blocks, garages and other buildings but still didn't find a pub. Along one particular road we were almost run over by cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko (we thought it was probably him) in his car.

Saturday 1st August

Since it was the weekend the training centre appeared very quiet as we went through the security gate. During the week there would be a constant stream of people, some in uniform, walking into work as we waited for our interpreters to arrive.

Our first stop was the centrifuge, which is housed in a large cylindrical building. It has a radius of seventeen metres, the rotating arm weighing 300 tonnes! It takes several megawatts of electrical power to run it up to speed, which it does in a few seconds. Two trainee cosmonauts can sit in a capsule at the end of the arm. It is hermetically sealed and can be rotated to give "g's" in any direction. About five to eight g are used for training. The hall in which it is contained was so large that a badminton court had been painted on the floor for use when the machine is idle! Unfortunately it would have cost too much to run it up to speed for our visit, even though it regenerates some of the power as it slows down. I discovered that the hall behaves the same way as the whispering gallery in St Paul's, where sounds are carried well around the circular wall.

Housed in another round building was the hydroweightlessness lab. This uses water to simulate weightlessness so that cosmonauts can practice spacewalks, for example if they have to replace a solar panel on Mir during a forthcoming mission. Lots of different parts of spacecraft can be lowered into the pool depending on the purpose of the spacewalk. It was dry when we saw it, but it had been used a few weeks prior to our visit by the Soyuz TM-15 cosmonauts. They had practiced the replacement of some gyroscopes on the underside of the station. The suits used underwater are similar to the EVA suits we had seen earlier in the week.

Afterwards we went to a lecture room where we had talks on Earth observation and space biotechnology. During the first one we were shown the German Zeiss camera used to photograph the Earth from Mir.

Having had lunch we took the coach into Moscow, where we were dropped off by a metro station. We descended into the crowded ticket hall where we paid one rouble (0.4p!) each for a round token which let us through the barrier.

Several things are striking about the Moscow metro. Firstly, there are no adverts or posters anywhere. Lighting is provided by ornate chandeliers and the design in general incorporates a lot of polished marble and granite. As the train we had taken headed further into the centre of the city the platforms we passed became more and more opulent.

Our destination was Arbat Street, a pedestrianised shopping area popular with tourists. As we emerged from the metro station I was disturbed to see twenty or more people trying to sell animals- puppies, kittens and so on. However we soon reached the main part of the market, which was a street at least half a mile long, with rows of privately owned stalls (such as we had already seen in smaller numbers at Zagorsk) running along its length. The range of items on sale was wider than elsewhere, including books, CDs, toy cars, paintings and other arts and crafts. There was the usual range of dolls, badges and military uniforms. I bought was a KGB identity card: like a significant fraction of such souvenirs it had probably been made specially for sale to tourists, but I could still sign it and stick my photo in. I also bought a Mars bar at one of the (presumably) state-owned kiosks of which there were a few along the street.

It is interesting to note that while the privately owned stalls were charging Western prices, the souvenir stalls in the museums were still selling things at insanely low prices by our standards. As a result I would imagine quite a lot of money is being made by the entrepreneurs. Arbat Street illustrated the fact that under the current turbulent conditions a few enterprising people are getting rich while most are losing out as inflation eats away at their income.

On one occasion during the week when we were late returning to the hotel, one of our translators (Marina) had to pay more than usual to get back home. The cost was in fact more than she had earned during the day- only about 90 roubles. On discovering this the following day, David (the teacher from Bristol) immediately reimbursed the fare.

Once back at Star City the coach dropped us off in the woods near one of the lakes where a barbecue had been laid on for us. We had all paid an extra 350 roubles since food for such a meal was obviously very expensive to obtain. We shared the cost of the Russians' meals between us. There was good meat, bread, cheese, potatoes, lettuce, spring onions, tomatoes, cucumber and the obligatory bottles of Fanta.

Cosmonauts Piotr Klimuk and Alexander Serebrov were there. They both made rousing speeches and exchanged casual conversation (usually via the interpreters, though) throughout the evening. Serebrov revealed that Boris Yeltsin was a friend of his and that he had told him of our visit to Star City. It was a pity that Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman in space) couldn't be there as we had expected.

The mood became more and more party-like until it started raining just after dusk. Up until then we had had sunny weather all week, though early in the morning it was often quite cold.

Eventually things started to wind down so I started to help clear up. I noticed that the fresh veg we hadn't eaten was packed away carefully for future use. I walked back to the hotel and went to bed; it would be a tiring day tomorrow.

Sunday 2nd August

It rained most of the way to Kaluga. We went through some scenic countryside, seeing forests, fields and rolling hills. Incidentally, the road on which we were travelling had been paid for by the Germans, and so was less full of potholes than the city streets. Kaluga turned out to be quite a picturesque town, situated on one side of a valley overlooking a river.

Our first stop was the museum of the History of Cosmonautics. Everyone headed straight for the loo. Much relieved we were then shown round by a middle aged woman who, it transpired, used to visit farms to teach the labourers about spaceflight early in the morning. That was back in the (supposedly) bad old days.

The tour was quite good and left us with a few minutes to go round on our own. By now we were old hands at visiting space museums and knew what to look out for. Outside there was a Vostok rocket on display- the sort used to launch Yuri Gagarin in 1961. Inside was a Vostok capsule, with its spherical descent module mounted on top. Many examples of unmanned probes and satellites were also on display; I took photos of these and looked them up in my reference books back home.

We went to lunch at a restaurant in the centre of town, where the food was excellent. The museum guide came with us! She explained that under the current economic conditions people are less interested in visiting museums, so she was glad to have a whole coachload of young and enthusiastic visitors.

Next we went to the small wooden house which was Tsiolkovsky's home. The female guide was very pleased to see us. She spoke excellent English and was able to give us a very informative guided tour. We saw his study, workshop, bedroom and so on. Everything seemed to be on such a simple scale, in contrast to Tsiolkovsky's unbounded imagination. In his workshop there was a door leading out onto the sloping roof of the house. On clear nights he used to take his home-made telescope out there and look up at the sky. His family called this the "door to the stars." At the shop downstairs they hadn't increased the prices recently, so I was able to buy a packet of postcards for 1.68 roubles (0.67p!). This enabled me to obtain some of the virtually worthless kopek coins.

After this we went to a local school, which because of the town's connection with Tsiolkovsky is absolutely potty about space. Even though it was Sunday and the middle of the school holidays it seemed that most of the pupils and teachers had turned out to greet us, some of them waving Union flags! They took us into the gymnasium where we watched a trampolining display. A couple of our number had a go to show how bad we were at it. We were shown round the school, which although very drab outside was covered with posters, murals and models inside. Various people described the different parts of the curriculum taught in the school, though I wondered if space was given too much weight at the expense of more vital subjects.

All the time during our tour we were swapping things with the children. I disposed of my biros and correction fluid, getting badges, postcards and other souvenirs in return. Most people had brought lots of chewing gum to give out. Chewing gum had in fact been invaluable throughout the week in establishing good relations with the Russians, but now was the chance to dispose of any remaining stock.

Things then became even stranger when one of the teachers produced a guitar and sang a song for us. Next we watched some kids dancing to an accordion, and then had a girl playing the piano. After this unexpected cultural display we went outside, where they had set up a model rocket. At the press of a button it shot up into the sky, reaching quite an altitude before deploying its tiny parachute and returning to the ground. Everyone clapped and cheered. After another song on the accordion it was time for us to leave.

All the members of the school seemed to have enjoyed our visit immensely, seeing it as a great honour to welcome a coachload of British kids sharing their interest in space. Certainly such a visit would have been a highly unusual occurrence until a few years ago. I felt almost like a visitor from another planet; the town of Kaluga and the school in particular seemed to me to be in the middle of nowhere. The sense of disorientation was compounded by not really knowing where we were, only that Kaluga was somewhere South of Moscow.

We got back on the coach and waved at the smiling faces as they receded. Over three hours later we arrived back at Star City feeling very hungry. We dined at the restaurant, which had stayed open to wait for us. Back at the hotel I packed my suitcase and bag and went to bed.

Monday 3rd August

Several speeches were made, with Rodney expressing our thanks in return for an excellent week's activities. The Russians agreed that despite the odd problem here and there, the course had been a success. They had found it a valuable exercise since nothing like it had ever been done before. Hopefully many more young people will have the chance to visit Star City in the future. After three cheers from our party people started signing each other's photos.

Back at the hotel Matthew and I left some chocolate in our room as a present for the cleaners, who had given us some fruit and a pot of jam during our stay. We hauled our luggage downstairs and waited for the coach to arrive. All week the coach had been on time but today was the exception. After about an hour's wait two turned up! We quickly loaded our luggage and set off for NPO Energia in Kaliningrad. NPO Energia is the corporation which manufactures most of the space hardware. At Kaliningrad they build such things as the Soyuz capsules and Mir modules.

When we arrived at the anonymous-looking factory we had to go through two security gates. We were shown into a reception building containing a museum.

All week we had seen used descent modules and assorted items of space hardware, but none of them had been from very significant missions. I had begun to wonder exactly where the really important stuff was kept. Nearly all of it was in this museum, which I presume never opened its doors to the public.

The guide showed us the back-up Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin's capsule (Vostok 1), Valentina Tereshkova's capsule (Vostok 6), Voskhod 1 (first mission with more than one crew member), Voskhod 2 (from which Leonov made the first spacewalk) and Soyuz 19 which docked with an American Apollo crew in 1975. There was also an unused Vostok capsule, a rocket engine and some unmanned probes, including the Zond 5 descent module which orbited the moon in 1968 before splashing down in the Indian Ocean amidst great secrecy. This was because it was part of the abortive Soviet programme to land a man on the moon. Similarly, until the mid 1980s hardly anyone from the West had seen Gagarin's capsule, because for years the fact that he had ejected and parachuted to Earth (instead of landing in his capsule) had been concealed. Most of us placed our hands reverently on its charred surface.

All too soon we had to rush off to lunch. It was probably the best meal we had had all week. There were even bottles of Pepsi! Due to the late arrival of the coaches we unfortunately didn't have time to see the factory floor as planned. I was most disappointed about this since it would have been fascinating.

The coaches took us to the airport, where we bade our final farewells to the Russians. Alexander Serebrov was there to see us off as well. At the last minute Katia went round giving us all presents; she gave me a small hand-painted wooden cup. During the morning we had organised a whip round, with everyone donating their spare roubles. This was split between our Russian friends as a parting gift. For some of them it would have been a significant addition to what they had earned during our stay.

The duty free shop in the departure lounge was a dazzling return to Western-style shopping and Western prices. I didn't buy anything, and worked out that I had spent only about seven pounds on souvenirs during my stay.

The plane, once again a BA Boeing 767, took off on time. I spent most of the flight either eating or walking round getting people to sign my diary, which I had managed to update every night.

After landing at Heathrow, more farewells were said as people dispersed, with everyone vowing to keep in touch. I took the tube to Paddington, arriving at 8.30pm with 45 minutes to wait till the Bristol train. I realised that a visit to a cashpoint was vital, so I spent that time trekking round the streets looking for one. I met up with Gabby again on the train; eventually she got off at Chippenham, leaving me to contemplate my return to work at Nuclear Electric after what had been one of the best holidays of my life.

It wasn't necessary to know any Russian; the translators were always around when needed. By the end of the stay I was able to recognise most of the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, but could only remember twenty or so words. Anyone wanting to sell you anything spoke English anyway. The trip would however still be very useful to anyone learning Russian.

Even though the word "lecture" cropped up occasionally in our itinerary, the level of complexity was low enough for most people to understand; the lectures had to be accessible to the youngest members of the party, ie 16 year olds.

Altogether the trip was fun and informative, managing to mix tourism with a fascinating insight into the Soviet/CIS manned space programme, past present and future.

[Not scanned in yet]

• Cover: 29/07/92: My first experience in an EVA spacesuit!
• Group photo of our party (and some of the Russians) on the steps of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre.
• 24/07/92: First impressions of the Moscow suburbs.
• 25/07/92: On our way to the cosmonautics museum in Star City.
• 25/07/92: The Lubyanka Jail, former headquarters of the KGB. Note the remains of Felix Dzerzhinsky's statue in front.
• 25/07/92: St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square. Richard Wyatt from HTV can be seen in the foreground with his camcorder.
• 25/07/92: Me standing in Red Square in front of Lenin's Mausoleum and the Kremlin wall.
• 25/07/92: The full width of Red Square, with the GUM department store on the left and Lenin's Mausoleum on the right.
• 26/07/92: Bargaining for an army jacket in the car park at Zagorsk monastery.
• 26/07/92: A domed church inside Zagorsk monastery.
• 26/07/92: Members of our party mingling with Russian soldiers. Can you tell them apart?
• 26/07/92: Most of our party outside the toy museum in Zagorsk. The monastery is visible in the distance.
• 27/07/92: Mission control in Kaliningrad on the day Soyuz TM-15 was launched. The capsule is visible as a dot on the screen.
• 28/07/92: Katia, who accompanied us during our visit to help translate and to practice her English. She's sitting in the Kremlin near Lenin's statue.
• 28/07/92: Me arriving at the Russian Parliament building far too late to help man the barricades.
• 29/07/92: Two of our number wearing the EVA spacesuits. Poor old Kavita (in red) was too short for them!
• 29/07/92: Rodney Buckland talking to Clare as she sits in a launch couch wearing a penguin spacesuit.
• 30/07/92: The Soyuz capsule simulator. The bottom half is the descent module and the top half is the orbital module. Cosmonaut Afanasyev (in green) can be seen at the hatch.
• 31/07/92: Me (right) sitting at the main control panel inside the Mir space station simulator.
• 31/07/92: The hall containing the space station simulator modules. Kristall is on the left, while Kvant 2, the core module and Kvant 1 are in a row by the windows. In space they are linked together in a T shape. Demar Volkov, the son of a cosmonaut, can be seen coming up the stairs on the left.
• 31/07/92: Inside the core module: the dining table and the hatch through to Kvant 1 can be seen. The sleeping cubicles are off to either side.
• 01/08/92: Katia standing by the water tank, which is 23 metres in diameter and 12 metres deep. Various parts of spacecraft can be seen round the edge, such as a Soyuz orbital module and a Mir multiple docking adapter.
• 02/08/92: A Vostok rocket, similar to the one which sent Gagarin into space in 1961, on display outside the cosmonautics museum in Kaluga.
• 02/08/92: A Vostok capsule in the cosmonautics museum in Kaluga. The silver sphere is the descent module where the cosmonaut sits.
• 02/08/92: Looking round the home of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Note his home-made telescope and the ear trumpets on the desk.
• 02/08/92: Musical entertainment from some of the teachers and pupils of the school in Kaluga.
• 03/08/92: A back-up Sputnik unscrewed to reveal the radio transmitter inside. Marina, one of our translators, is standing on the left interpreting for us.
• 03/08/92: Descent modules of (L-R) Voskhod 1, Vostok 6 and Vostok 1 (Yuri Gagarin's capsule) in the NPO Energia museum. Behind is an unused Vostok capsule. On the balcony is a Soyuz capsule and three other modules.
• 03/08/92: The Soyuz 19 descent module (used in the Apollo-Soyuz mission). Behind is another Soyuz capsule, and an inflatable airlock similar to the one used by Alexei Leonov.
• 03/08/92: About to take off from Moscow Sheremetyevo on our way home after a very enjoyable visit.

Andrew J Ball, 1992.

Long Vacation Travel Grant Report; paper copy resides in the library of Churchill College, Cambridge.